Join the Davis Friends Meeting for the next speaker in our  Davis Climate Speaker Series 2021: Mark Reiff on Climate Change and Capitalism, online 7 pm, Tuesday, March 23, 2021. The event is being co-sponsored by the Yolo Interfaith Alliance for Climate Justice, and Cool Davis Coalition.

Register Now Here!

From Prof. Reiff: “Many of those who see the damage that climate change has brought down upon us, and the threat of even greater damage looming on the horizon, believe that is capitalism that has brought us to the brink of disaster. But I think this way of understanding the problem is a mistake. Capitalism is an economic system, and as an economic system, it is not designed to implement social policy, only economic policy. Implementing social policy is the job of our political system. Climate change is accordingly the result of the failure our political system to reign in the conduct of economic actors, not the system that defines who those actors are. In this talk, I will explain what the political failures that plague us are and why they have occurred, and show that rather than encouraging the mismanagement of our environment, capitalism actually explains where we have gone wrong. Indeed, if we simply take the principles of capitalism more seriously, we can find all the justification that we need for addressing our environmental problems rather than ignoring them.”

View PDF of event flyer

The following speakers in the series will be:

Hugh Safford – Fire Trends in California – Thursday, April 29

Ermias Kebreab – The Green Moo Deal Thursday, May 13

Mark R. Reiff is the author of five books:  In the Name of Liberty: The Argument for Universal Unionization (Cambridge University Press, 2020); On Unemployment, Volume I and II (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Exploitation and Economic Justice in the Liberal Capitalist State (Oxford University Press, 2013); and Punishment, Compensation, and Law: A Theory of Enforceability (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Dr. Reiff has taught political, legal, and moral philosophy at the University of Manchester, the University of Durham, the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Sonoma State University, and the University of California at Davis, and in 2008-09 was a Faculty Fellow at the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.